Adolfo Lopez Mateos

Adolfo López Mateos , 1910-69, president of Mexico (1958-64). A lawyer, he became active in the government party. He served as senator (1946-52) and as minister of labor (1952-58), during which time he settled more than 13,000 disputes. As president, he fostered industrial growth and diversification, attracted large amounts of foreign capital, and presided over an economic boom. He instituted profit sharing for workers and promoted agrarian reform. Maintaining close relations with the United States, he negotiated the return to Mexico of a long-disputed 437-acre (177-hectares) border strip along the Texas boundary. After retiring as president, he headed the committee that arranged for the 1968 Olympic games to be held in Mexico City.

López Mateos Adolfo (b. 26 May 1910, d. 22 Sept. 1969). President of Mexico 1958–64 A graduate in law, he became a university lecturer and entered politics in 1946. He became secretary-general of Mexico's major party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and was a successful Minister of Labour under President Cortines (1952–8). Despite his pro-labour reputation, as President he broke the militant railworkers' strike of 1959, but afterwards he introduced a general profit-sharing plan for Mexican workers. He carried out a land reform whose extent was second only to that of Cárdenas, as 30 million acres (around 12.1 million hectares) of land were redistributed to landless peasants. A low rate of inflation and a stable exchange rate were maintained, which attracted foreign investment. In foreign affairs, he finally settled a long-running border dispute south of El Paso with the USA, and maintained a foreign policy of conscious independence from the USA, refusing to break diplomatic relations with Castro's Cuba.

Atl, Dr ( Gerardo Murillo) (1875–1964). Mexican painter and art administrator. He was an ardent nationalist and a pioneer of the 20th-century renaissance of his county's art—chapter 1 of MacKinley Helm's book Modern Mexican Painters (1941) is entitled ‘Dr Atl, the Saint John Baptist of Mexican Art'. He travelled and studied in Europe, 1897–1903, obtained a doctoral degree in philosophy and law at Rome in 1898, and adopted the name Atl—an Aztec word for ‘water'—in 1902. After his return to Mexico he became a teacher at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, where his pupils included Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros. In 1910 he organized an exhibition of Mexican art as a counterblast to the European art promoted by the country's president, Porfirio Díaz. After the outbreak of revolution, Atl went to Europe in 1911, but he returned to Mexico in 1913 and rallied artists to the cause of Venustiano Carranza, who became president in 1917. In 1920 Carranza was murdered and was succeeded by Alvaro Obregón, under whose relatively peaceful and liberal regime there was a cultural efflorescence; in the government post of director of the department of fine arts, Atl promoted the mural decoration of public buildings that was Mexico's greatest contribution to 20th-century art. He painted murals himself, but his talent in this field was modest, and as an artist he is better known for his landscapes, particularly those featuring volcanoes, a subject in which he was passionately interested. He often worked in ‘Atl-colour’ (a kind of wax crayon). Late in life—already a semi-legendary figure—he became a recluse. Adolfo López Mateos, president of Mexico 1958–64, declared Atl ‘the nation's beloved son'.